American Cops’ Killing Spree in 2015: By the Numbers. Categorized by the FBI as “Justified Homicides”

In 2015, police in the United States continued to kill at a rate
far higher than every other country in the world for which statistics
are currently available. That year, U.S. cops killed at least 1,200
people, more than three per day on average, according to the research of
the websitewww.killedbypolice.net.The exact number is not known. There is no federal agency that keeps
track. The FBI compiles annual statistics for “justified homicides” by
police—but participation in the program by the approximately 18,000
police agencies in the country is completely voluntary, and only about
800 actually provide reports. Most departments, including the
notoriously racist and murderous New York Police Department, do not
participate at all.The FBI reported 444 killings by police in 2014, the latest report
available. The FBI’s amazingly broad definition of “justifiable
homicide” by police is: “The killing of a felon by a law enforcement
officer in the line of duty.” The FBI classified every one of the 444
killings as “justified.”“The Counted,” a project of the U.K.-based Guardian newspaper,
documented the deaths of 1,136 people killed by U.S. police in 2015. Its
extensively researched database confirmed the racist and class
dimensions of police violence.African Americans were killed at a rate of 7.15 per million (301
deaths); Latinos – 3.48 per million (193 deaths); Native Americans – 3.4
per million (13 deaths); whites – 2.92 per million (578 deaths); and
Asian/Pacific Islanders – 1.34 per million (24 deaths). No corporate
criminals are in the list.No ‘war on police’ in 2015And while the FBI makes no effort to create a comprehensive database
of annual police killings, the agency has very exact numbers of police
officers “killed in the line of duty.” This data comes from the “Officer
Down Memorial Project,” which receives funding from the federal
Department of Justice.The “Officer Down” project includes in its 2015 report six Air Force
Special Agents killed in Afghanistan, and even lists all police dogs
that die or are killed “in the line of duty.”Contrary to the demagogic campaign rhetoric from a number of current
candidates for U.S. president, there is no evidence whatsoever of a “war
on police.” In fact, the number of police killed in 2015 declined
significantly from the previous year. Police officers who died inside
the United States or its territories (colonies) dropped from 133 in 2014
to 123 in 2015, the majority in both years due to illness or accidents.Police officers killed by hostile actions—gunfire or assault—declined
from 64 to 49. Given that there are more than 1.5 million police in the
country, those numbers reveal that the claim of a “war on cops” is
truly bogus.U.S. cops kill at 100 times or more the rate of other countriesU.S. political leaders frequently promote the chauvinistic idea of
“American exceptionalism,” the notion that the United States is the “one
indispensable country,” superior to all others. It is dangerous
propaganda employed to justify wars and interventions around the world.But in the area of state violence, the United States is indeed
“exceptional,” particularly as compared to other developed capitalist
states.In Britain, also a capitalist country with a long history of racism,
police reportedly fired guns three times in all of 2013, with zero
reported fatalities. Police do not generally carry guns on patrol. From
2010 through 2014, there were five fatal police shootings in Britain,
which has a population of about 52 million. By contrast, Albuquerque,
N.M., with a population 1 percent of Britain’s, had 26 fatal police
shootings in that same time period!In 2015, German police, who do carry guns, reportedly killed two
people. Germany, another racist, imperialist country with large numbers
of oppressed minorities, has a population about one quarter that of the
United States.While police killings in Canada, another multi-national state, have
sharply increased in the past two years, U.S. cops were five times as
likely to kill as their Canadian counterparts. Japan had no reported
police killings in recent years.Contrary to the myths propagated by politicians, mass media and
schoolbooks, extreme racist, anti-worker and anti-poor violence has been
a central feature of U.S. history since the country’s founding. U.S.
capitalism was constructed on a foundation of genocidal extermination of
Native people and the unpaid labor and murder of millions of enslaved
Africans. The U.S. ruling class created whole agencies of armed thugs to
shoot down and repress striking workers.State violence has been an essential element of a system based on
ruthless exploitation inside and outside the U.S. borders. It will only
be eliminated when the system itself is.